


From My Hands

by coldfiredragon



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bring tissues, F/M, Finale spoilers, General Series Spoilers, Heavy Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Nothing is okay, Platonic Soulmates, Unrequited Love, no happy ending, one-shot story, queliot, this was painful to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 15:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14240556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldfiredragon/pseuds/coldfiredragon
Summary: When Quentin reveals his decision to incept the knight, and his agreement to take her place, it shatters his friendship with Eliot in ways he never predicted.





	From My Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was born from the idea that the mosaic was added to the quest to give the quester the full lifetime they would give up when they got to the castle at the end of the world and became the jailer for the monster waiting there. 
> 
> The title for this angst fest of a fic comes from the VNV Nation song 'From My Hands' Found here -->> https://open.spotify.com/track/2A7EMQFfvXl7NTZYWg2u34 
> 
> I recommend you give it a listen as you read this if you want the 'cry your way through half a box of tissues' experience I had writing it.

When Quentin told his friends about incepting the knight he wasn't prepared for what would follow, Alice trying to talk him out of it he expected, kinda. The two of them will never be what they had been before he'd slept with Eliot and Margo for the first time, and her alliance has been all over the place over the last few months. Quentin isn't even sure that they should take her to the castle. Eliot needing a drink was a given, but he hadn't expected Eliot to grab the whole bottle of the closest liquor he could get his hand around and storm out of the room. The front door of the cottage had been yanked closed behind Eliot with all the force his best friend could muster. It had rattled the wall, and in the silence that followed the precariously balanced D of the 'TADA' had fallen over with a resounding smack. 

Quentin had jumped at the sound and darted towards the door to follow Eliot outside before anyone could say anything else. It took him a second or two of listening to the crickets before deciding to check the patio. Eliot sat slouched in one of the deck chairs with the bottle to his lips. 

“Go away.” He hissed as Quentin knelt in front of him. 

“El, please. I know this is a shock.” 

“Fuck you.” Quentin closed his eyes and swallowed the lump forming in his throat. 

“El, this is what the quest was designed to do. It was a test to determine if one of us was worthy enough to take this woman's place. It has to be me! I killed Ember!” 

“The point was to bring back magic, Quentin. We have a bullet that can kill a god! It will kill whatever that thing in the castle is!”

“If it could be killed the gods would have killed it!” 

“The gods are too fucking busy patting themselves on the back to do anything useful!” 

“I have to do this; I'm ready to do this. The quest made me ready!” 

“How?” Eliot snarled. “You have your whole life ahead of you, and you're throwing it away! How are you ready to give that up?” 

“That was what the mosaic was for, El, to give whoever was on the quest the chance to live out the life they would give up. We lived the most incredible life we could have asked for, El.” The punch came out of nowhere, one second Eliot was sitting, the next he'd surged to his feet, and his fist had slammed into Quentin's jaw. 

“You fucking bastard!” Eliot hurled the bottle at the cottage wall and blinked away tears. “You had a perfect life! Don't pretend for a second that we both did!” 

“El?” Quentin blinked at him in confusion. His jaw wasn't broken, but it was going to bruise. “What are you talking about?”

“I love you! I _Love_ you, Quentin! I've loved you since the second I met you because you're my goddamn soulmate! When I went looking for a way to bring back magic all I wanted was a wish, but I got a fucking quest instead – one that the Great Cock said my friends would help me complete. He described us as 'parts of one whole.' He claimed you are 'the brother of my heart.'”

“Why didn't you tell me any of this?” 

“I wanted you to realize it on your own! I thought how it was obvious how I felt! I thought we would get there when all this was over, when we had magic back, and Fillory was safe. I thought you knew! I gave up _everything_ for _you_! My freedom, my independence, the chance to marry someone I might have actually loved. I thought sacrificing all of it for that fucking worthless knife would somehow fix and save the friendship I almost ruined!” Eliot stopped to scrub away the tears that racing down his cheeks. His voice shook when he was able to continue. It had lost all its venom. “I thought the mosaic was when it would happen. For one perfect night I had you, all my demons quieted, but I wasn't good enough! You picked Arielle over me as soon as you saw her. You got the idyllic storybook life you always wanted, and I got to watch my soulmate grow old without him ever looking my way.” 

“I thought we were happy.” The words came out of Quentin's throat as a miserable croak. 

“We were! I loved Teddy like he was mine! He was all the best parts of you! Think! For one second, of how much happier we could have been if you had opened your eyes and really saw me. We could have had a love for the ages!”

“El...” 

“Don't! I'm not a king anymore, Quentin! I finally get to live my life again! When Margo won the throne I was shocked, but I saw it for the chance to tell you how I felt finally, and now you're throwing everything away and making the same mistake I did. Being the martyr won't make you happy, sacrificing your freedom for an eternity of loneliness isn't your destiny. You need people that love you, to hold you up. You're so fucking strong, Q, but what makes you strong is are the bonds you have with all of us; without them, I think you'll break. The first few years might work out, but it will creep up on you, and eventually, you'll shatter.” Eliot stopped speaking again. “I can't... I can't go with you and watch you give everything away.” He stuttered after a moment. “I won't, get Todd to go with you, so you still have enough people.” 

“El, stop! Please, not like this!” 

“I think the Great Cock was right and maybe I interpreted it wrong.” Eliot mused. He wrapped his arms around himself and stared at the ground “Maybe he meant you're my brother in all but blood, and that the love we have for each other was nothing but platonic.” Eliot backed towards the edge of the patio; a step away he spun, jogged down the steps, then around the corner of the house. 

Quentin walked to the edge of the patio and even made it down the steps before his legs stopped working and he crumpled. Seventy years of memory had suddenly been cast in new light. He'd been forced out of his happy little bubble to see what they had lived through from an outsider's perspective. There had been so many occasions when Eliot had tried to hint that he would have welcomed more. Quentin buried his face against his legs as a broken sob escaped his throat. The axis of his world had been turned. Everything, from the day he'd arrived at Brakebills felt different now. He'd been so blind to the potential, to the affection, which had radiated from Eliot like a sun. Eliot had been the first, honestly the only, person to accept every facet of who Quentin was and he'd squandered that. 

When he raised his head again, Margo was standing at the corner of the house with her arms over her chest. She tilted her chin defiantly in his direction. 

“Margo...” Instinct screamed at Quentin to beg her to help him fix this, but the words she had to say before he could speak more than her name stopped him. 

“Fuck you, Coldwater.” 

“Margo.”

“Eliot packed a bag. He made Penny take him to New York. When Penny gets back, I'm going back to Fillory.” 

“We have to do this together!” Quentin could feel everything they had fought for unraveling in moments. “You need magic to hold Fillory!” He tried to reason with her. 

“I have the animals, a million of them, Quentin. Loria and the Floaters can't match those numbers. A lot of them have a magic of their own. As long as I keep them happy I don't need wellspring magic.”

“Please help me fix this!” Quentin begged her. First Julia, now Eliot and Margo? This Penny wasn't likely to stay with Julia gone, and Kady wouldn't stay without a Penny. Josh would just slide back into his addictions. 

“You've made your devil's bargain, Quentin. Now own it. Take Todd and your bitch Poppy. You'll still have seven people.”

“I want to do this with my family, Margo! That's you and El!” 

“Then you should have saved that spell Julia gave you so we could have used it for something productive!” 

“We needed a way into the castle!”

“But you didn't have to bargain away your freedom! It didn't work when El did it! He only agreed to be king because he wanted to save your life, and you promised to be there to help him rule, but everyone else was more important. If it wasn't Alice, it was Penny, if it wasn't Penny it was Julia. El never came first even when you claimed he was your best friend. I'm not helping you get him back so you can break his heart again.” There was a flicker of movement as Penny appeared a few feet from them. 

“Are you ready?” He asked Margo, as he held out a hand to her. 

“Yeah.” Quentin could see her blinking away tears in the moonlight. “Bye, Q. Good luck!” She slipped her hand into Penny's, and the two of them disappeared. 

“Q?” Alice's voice shook as it came from behind him. 

“Leave me alone.” He whispered. “I need a couple of hours to myself.” He wished Eliot hadn't smashed the bottle, so he had something to drink. Quentin looked back at her and ducked his head so his hair would hide the bruise when she gasped at the sight of it. 

“Eliot hit you?”

“He had a lot of good reasons.” 

“Are you sure I can't help? I love you, Q.” Quentin started to say he loved her too, but it would have been a lie. He hadn't loved her in a lifetime. He hadn't truly loved her since the night with the emotion bottle,s when all the self-doubt and demons in his mind had dropped away as he'd kissed Eliot for the first time. He'd squandered so much potential. He'd wasted a lifetime that he could have lived an eternity remembering.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry! This really did break my heart, because these boys are my forever OTP. I cried through writing most of it, and I might revisit some of these themes in my main fic when I get that far, but it certainly won't go in this direction! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated!


End file.
